These Monogamous Penguins Have Been Together For 16 Years

A pair of Magellanic penguins have remained faithful to each
other for 16 years, according to researchers who have been
monitoring the birds and have shown they can travel up to 10,000
miles a year in their search for food and love.

It is a story of epic journeys and enduring love.

A pair of Magellanic penguins has been revealed as among the most
faithful of couples in the animal kingdom.

Their relationship has spanned 16 years — almost their entire
breeding life — despite spending long periods apart and each of
them taking solo trips totalling 200,000 miles.

Yet each year they have returned to the same nest, and each
other, to produce a new brood of chicks.

Now they have grown old together — the penguin’s natural lifespan
means they normally die around 20 years after they start
breeding.

Biologists have expressed surprise at the endurance of the
couple’s relationship as most pairings are cut short by either
the death of one of the penguins during their long sea journeys
or a failure to successfully produce chicks, which are often
killed by predators or hunger.

Research has revealed a tragic twist to Magellanic penguin
relationships — if a couple ever fails to successfully hatch
their chicks then they will “divorce,” leaving each other to find
new partners.

The longest relationships between penguins previously seen by
researchers have been between five and ten years before tragedy
strikes and they fail to breed successfully.

The tale, which would rival any romantic novel, has emerged as
part of a 30-year study of Magellanic penguins, one of the most
abundant but poorly-understood flightless birds on the planet.

They spend their summer breeding season on the Patagonian
coastline of southern Argentina, where researchers put metal
identity bands on the flippers of 50,000 birds to follow their
progress.

Satellite tracking conducted for the first time this year has
added a new insight, revealing the enormous journeys they make
each winter when they migrate individually to warmer waters off
Brazil. They live, sleep and eat on the waves for up to six
months, clocking up around 10,000 miles before returning in the
spring to their old nest and the same partner.

“The bond they have is incredible really,” said Dr Pablo Garcia
Borboroglu, a researcher at the National Research Council of
Argentina who has been leading the research and president of the
Global Penguin
Society .

“It is unbelievable how far Magellanic penguins swim – and each
breeding season they come back to the same nest and to the same
partner.”

For most of the three-decade study, the penguins were monitored
on the Argentinian beaches of Punta Tombo and Cabo Dos Bahias,
but their activities while at sea remained a mystery. The
researchers tried to follow the penguins at sea but would
frequently lose track of them.

Now, however, new lightweight satellite positioning tags have
been fitted to 15 birds - dubbed VIPs, or Very Important Penguins
- allowing Dr Borboroglu and his colleagues to follow their
movements in more detail.

The study has been carried out jointly with Dr Dee Boersma of the
University of Washington, another expert in Magellanic penguins,
who said it was an impressive feat for the penguin pair that have
remained together for 16 years due to the risks their young face
in the wild.

She said: “Many pairs stay together for five or even ten years.
The fate of most penguin chicks is to die - they get eaten by
predators or simply starve as their parents don’t bring them
enough food.”

Magellanic penguins usually begin to breed from around the age of
five years old for females and seven years old for males.

The penguins arrive at their nesting sites in September - spring
in the southern hemisphere - and find their partners among the
100,000-strong colony by the distinctive sound of one another’s
calls. Once reunited at their old nest, the birds groom each
other to re-establish their bond.

After mating, the female typically lays two eggs. The parents
take turns standing over the eggs while the other partner goes
out to sea, swimming up to 100 miles a day in search of the fish
and squid they feed on.

The eggs hatch after six weeks, then the parents spend another
month together looking after the young. Once chicks are old
enough to look after themselves, the penguins undertake an even
more impressive journey that takes them up to 3,500 miles north,
to their wintering area.

Dr Borboroglu said he hoped further analysis of the tag data
would help reveal whether the penguins meet up in the ocean, and
whether their routes put them at risk from shipping or oil
production.

He revealed his research after delivering a lecture to the
Whitley Fund for Nature in London, which has helped fund his
studies after he won a
Whitley Award in 2010 . He will set out his findings in a
book to be published next year called Penguins: Natural History
and Conservation.

Dr Borboroglu believes that penguins can help to provide a
valuable indication of how healthy the oceans are as their
populations dramatically vary according to fish numbers.

There are 18 penguin species, five of which are deemed to be
endangered while six are classed as vulnerable.

Numbers of Magellanic penguins have dropped dramatically since
the turn of the century with some colonies halving in the past 15
years due to threats from oil spills and falling fish numbers.
There are thought to be around 1.2 million left in the world.

Happy families: other monogamous species

Albatross – Living for up to 80 years, these seabirds mate for
life. They will wander the skies above the open oceans for years
at a time before returning to their nests, usually on remote
islands, to breed with the same partner.

French angel fish – These fish bond for all 15 years of their
lives and will often not seek a new partner if one of them dies.
They travel as couples, defending their territory and feeding
side-by-side.

Prairie vole – Just five per cent of mammals are monogamous.
These voles are among the select few that pair for life, but only
live one year. Even after the female dies, the male will not look
for a new partner.

Black vulture – These American scavengers, which live for an
average of 30 years, show that looks are not important when
mating for life. They have even been observed to attack other
vultures that have strayed from their mates.

Kirk’s Dik-Dik – This dwarf African antelope forms monogamous
pairs for life - around four years in the wild. Initially
biologists believed this was because males seldom encounter more
than one female, but recent research has shown that even when
other single females are nearby, the males stay faithful.

Kings of the swingers: those that are less picky about their
partners

Bonobos - these close relatives of
chimpanzees are highly promiscuous. Living in small mixed-sex
groups, they engage in more sexual liaisons than any other
primate, often with members of their own families.

Bronze-winged jacana - the females of these tropical shorebirds
maintain harems of males, laying many clutches of eggs for the
males to tend. The females will often destroy eggs of competing
females to have the opportunity to mate with a male.

Bottlenose dolphins - Dolphins mate both to reproduce and for
pleasure, often as a form of social interaction. Their liaisons,
however, are usually brief, lasting less than a minute.